Great article by Sean Hollister on the demise of the QWERTY slider. In the article, Hollister speaks with Doug Kaufman, manager of handset strategy for Sprint, and his revelations are intriguing - it's not so much that people do not want hardware keyboards; it's that people want iconic, flagship phones - like the S4, like the 5S - with huge marketing pushes. Since nobody is pushing a flagship QWERTY slider... Nobody buys them. However, when you ask consumers what they want, physical keyboards are very, very popular.

And so, Kaufman admits: if there was an HTC One or Galaxy S4, a top-of-the-line phone, but with a keyboard - it would sell.

That's doesn't sound like a lot of text though. To make a reminder you can also use dictation or simply record your voice. I sometimes make notes while driving and not touch or see my phone at all while doing it.

I'm not aware of a single voice recognition - based assistant for Android that can handle Finnish and even if I did I don't want to talk out loud all my messages publicly. I've wanted a good assistant for a long time now for when I'm driving, but alas.. Also, I don't think the amount of text I write bears any relevance as to the downsides of virtual keyboards.

Most people don't want this.

That's their loss. But I have to ask, how do you know what they want or don't want? Do you have some data to support this claim?

You sit down, just like you would with a tablet + keyboard or a laptop.

Welcome to the real world where there are no tables and benches every 5 meters.

Look, I'm not saying physical keyboards are bad or you are doing things wrong. I just don't think all the benefits of a keyboard outweigh the downsides and that a virtual keyboard, while less good, is good enough to be a replacement.

And I'm saying that's an opinion. My opinion is the opposite: even with the downsides I'd still choose a H/W keyboard over a virtual one, virtual ones simply have more and worse downsides than a H/W - one. Alas, no one manufactures high-end phones with H/W keyboards.